Oct. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Airbnb Inc., the short-term home
rental service for travelers, was asked to provide information
to New York’s attorney general about its hosts who rent and
sublet apartments, a person familiar with the probe said.

State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s office issued a
subpoena today for information about whether people who put
units on the Airbnb website are complying with state rental
laws, said the person, who asked not to be identified because
the investigation isn’t public.

Airbnb allows people to rent dwellings on a short-term
basis as an alternative to hotels. A 2010 New York law bars
renters from subletting apartments for fewer than 30 days with
some exceptions.

Schneiderman’s office is looking at whether property
managers or brokers are skirting the law by renting out large
numbers of units, or whether some individuals are using
apartments for transient guests for large portions of the year,
the person said. Casual hosts who occasionally rent personal
apartments they own or lease through the service aren’t a target
of the probe, the person said.

Matt Mittenthal, a spokesman for Schneiderman, declined to
comment.

Legal Battleground

New York City has been a legal battleground for Airbnb.
Last month, the company helped a tenant who sublet his apartment
through the service overturn a $2,400 fine levied by the city.

Democratic State Senator Liz Krueger, the author of the
state’s illegal-hotel law, has called Airbnb’s business model
“unambiguously illegal” in the city.

In a blog post yesterday, Airbnb’s head of global policy,
David Hantman, said the company wants “to work with governments
to make the Airbnb community stronger.”

The demand from the attorney general’s office, seeking data
on 15,000 New York Airbnb hosts, is “unreasonably broad and we
will fight it with everything we’ve got,” he wrote.

The company plans to continue conversations with
Schneiderman’s office and try to remove “bad actors” from
service while protecting hosts’ information, Hantman said.
Airbnb is working with policy makers to try to clarify the
rental laws and to find ways of ensuring that users pay
applicable lodging taxes, he said.